Dom Parsons went from crushing low to soaring high in the space of three tense minutes to secure Team’s GB first Olympic medal in PyeongChang.

Parsons - a PhD student at the University of Bath - was third coming into the final run of the men’s skeleton but saw his position overtaken by Nikita Tregubov with two sliders left on the track.

Latvia’s Martins Dukurs is famed as the most consistent slider on the circuit but his final run was riddled with uncharacteristic errors and Parsons, watching through his fingers, claimed the final podium spot.

Parsons, who was 10th in Sochi in 2014, revealed it has been a stressful few weeks, with a pre-Games abductor muscle injury nearly derailing his ambitions.

The 30-year-old said: "That was a bit of a rollercoaster and it hasn't really sunk in yet. I thought I'd lost it after that fourth run, it felt like it'd had gone. I thought I’d binned it.

“But Martins Dukurs has made some more mistakes and he's the last person I'd expect that from, he’s been dominant for so many years.

"It's just those little hundredths making a difference, it's so close at the top. I’m just grateful that I got lucky."

The mechanical engineering student is the first British man to win an Olympic skeleton medal since John Crammond 70 years ago. It’s the fifth consecutive Games a British skeleton slider has made the Olympic podium.

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"It's been great. All the work we've put in has paid off. Right now it’s just very hard to process and doesn’t seem real.

“In the last Olympic season I did it the wrong way around. I got a podium in the first race and my results declined.

"This year, it’s been the other way around. The last couple of races things have been improving and I was starting to gel with my set-up.”

Dom Parsons (Image: Patrick Elmont/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, team-mate Jerry Rice claimed he’d be looking to continue Britain’s skeleton tradition in Beijing after career best 10th.

He said: "It's amazing. He made us all nervous right at the end there but he deserves it. He works hard and he was the man who always said that he had the potential to do something like that and he's done it.

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"Dom finished tenth in Sochi four years ago. I see myself on that same trajectory and it definitely gives me an extra drive.”

The British Bobsleigh & Skeleton Association (BBSA) is based at the University of Bath. Reigning Olympic champion and former Bath Chronicle Sports Awards winner Lizzy Yarnold and Laura Deas are in action today.

Can Lizzy Yarnold and Laura Deas follow Dom’s lead? Catch them in the women’s skeleton at 11.20am today and tomorrow. Don’t miss a moment of the Olympic Winter Games on Eurosport and Eurosport Player. Go to www.eurosport.co.uk